Inflating a blood pressure cuff on a patient's arm directly before heart surgery could minimize damage and increase their rate of survival.
The process (called "remote ischemic preconditioning,") cuts off blood-flow to a part of the body far away from the heart, and then quickly restores it, Healthday reported.
"This procedure could be a promising and simple strategy to protect patients' heart muscle during surgery and hopefully improve health outcomes after surgery," Dr. Matthias Thielmann, of the University School of Medicine Essen, said.
Heart muscle damage is a common occurrence in certain types of surgery.
A study observed 162 patients who used the procedure shortly before undergoing heart surgery. Their blood flow was restricted for about five minutes and then restored for an addition five.
The patients were compared to control group which did not receive the treatments before surgery.
After the surgery, medical researchers tested both groups' blood for the concentration of a protein called troponin I, which can be an indicator of damage to the heart muscles.
The higher the concentration of troponin I, the more damage sustained. The team found 72 hours after surgery; the patients who were given remote ischemic preconditioning had troponin levels that were 17 percent lower than the control group.
A year after surgery the study subjects who had remote ischemic preconditioning were "73 percent less likely to have died of any cause, and 86 percent less likely to have died from heart attack or stroke, compared to those in the control group."
"The results of our study are very encouraging that remote ischemic preconditioning not only reduces heart muscle injury but also improves long-term health outcomes for heart bypass patients, and we hope that these benefits will be confirmed in larger prospective studies which are currently taking place," study co-leader Professor Gerd Heusch, of the University School of Medicine Essen, said.
